The "Stop the Stigma" Campaign

Press Release on Stop the Stigma Campaign

ACORD in partnership with Kenyan musician Kwame Rigii has developed a 5-minute song and music video calling for an end to stigma and discrimination against hard to reach communities and vulnerable minorities.

The ‘Stop the Stigma’ campaign is an effort to highlight the effect of stigma and discrimination. The main objective of the campaign is to improve knowledge and stop discriminatory attitude and behavior towards the hard to reach communities in an effort to secure their right to health and safety and thereby support overall curtailing of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The campaign targets staff, partner organisations, local communities policy makers, goverment and health care providers.

Despite the increased and wide spread knowledge of the impacts of stigma and discrimination in regard to HIV and AIDS, the evidence of stigma is rampant among the hard to reach communities. Studies have also shown that lack of access to quality treatment, care and support services and treatment and treatment directly contributes to the increase in new cases of HIV.

ACORD works to promote the equal right to health for all irrespective of their economic, social, political, age ,gender or sexual orientation.

UNAIDS Definition of Stigma: "A dynamic process of devaluation that ‘significantly discredits' an individual in the eyes of others. The qualities to which stigma adheres can be quite arbitrary - for example, skin color, manner of speaking, or sexual orientation. Within particular cultures or settings, certain attributes are seized upon and defined by others as discreditable or unworthy".

Right to health: People’s entitlement to health care and the living conditions or underlying determinants that are necessary for good health. The major factors include Safe drinking water and adequate sanitation; Safe food and adequate nutrition and housing; Healthy working and environmental conditions; health-related education and information as well as gender equality. Right to health is not limited to citizens’ good health, but also embodies rights to access to functional health care facilities that are accessible, gender sensitive, and are medically and culturally acceptable.